Chapter 298

Just like in my other life the urge to screw just anyone at all passed quickly. Without any 'romance' the animal urge passed easily. Okay that was probably bullshit in the new wrapper and maybe it had been in the old wrapper as well, but it helped me to stay sane. No woman, not even the sluttiest, wants to believe that they are beyond being able to say no to a man.

I went into power saving standby mode. I just sat there like a microwave oven which was not being used at the moment. My clock was keeping time, and I was one push of the button away from being at full power.

A man, who I had never seen, came into the room. I sensed him. In the old me it would have been debatable whether I really did or not. In the new me, there was no question. My sensors picked up his breathing and even the change in the air temperature caused by his body heat. Hell I could even tell you his body weight more than likely.

I opened the protective lids over the lenses of my extremely low light sensors and there he was. I had never seen him before, but I knew he was all business from the way he held himself. That and the thick file in his hands.

"Good morning Maxine, I think it will be easier for us both if we have a real conversation, at least this first time." he suggested.

"You seem to be holding the file, and all the cards for now," I said it to challenge him just a bit.

"So I do. They told me you were going to be difficult," he suggested.

"I do hope you are up to it," I replied.

"As do I. My code name is Drake." he said confidently.

"As in the duck?" I asked.

"That could easily be your interpretation, or maybe as in Sir Francis Drake." he replied.

"Why, Sir Francis Drake?" I asked.

"Because your code name has been chosen, since you are going operational now," Drake informed me.

"I do hope it isn't lady anything. That always reminds me of a dog's name. I know I can be a bitch sometimes, but I don't like to be reminded." I admitted.

"Your code name is Duchess," he replied without smiling.

"Duchess interesting choice," I suggested.

"I didn't choose it, so let's move on," he replied.

"Whatever you wish Drake," I said using his code name jokingly. "So I am being commissioned. Do you break a champaign bottle over my head?"

"Nothing like that, we just give you an objective and push you out into the cold cruel world."

"Now that is not very nice. But then I don't suppose I have a choice," I said.

"I have a little speech, but why bother," he said. "You owe us big time Maxine. If not for this program, you would be in a hospital bed with tubes up your ass for as long as they chose to keep you 'alive'.

We gave you a second life, and a chance to kill the asshole who killed you.So like any other entity, we want to collect on our investment. You have had time to adjust to your new body. We have also had time to adjust to your personality, such as it is. Now it's time we see what you can do together."

"Believe it or not that sounds perfectly reasonable to me," I replied.

"You were getting bored already. Well love, you are going to have to make do with playing real estate tycoon in that little piece of hell you call home. We can't have you running from job to job. You have very special talents and uses.

So between assignments find something you can use to pass the time. Before you ask, if you were an Eve, we would just put you in a storage building until we need you. Since you can manage yourself, it's no skin off our ass, if you function in Aster between jobs. Doing that keeps you current, so that we don't have to do a catch up download. Sometimes we miss something important before we send you out. You can keep yourself fully updated. It's a real win, win for us.

"Okay I get it, so what's the job?" I asked.

"Oh you are going to love this one," he said throwing the big file in front of me. "You get to go undercover in D.C. instead of crawling through the jungle somewhere. Well it isn't exactly undercover, but you get to do some playacting."

"The pictures in this folder are people in evening clothes. Am I going to pretend to be a party animal?" I asked smiling.

"That's exactly what you are going to do. You, and your predecessors, can drink anything, ingest anything, and still function perfectly. That is a great asset when you are undercover. In your case, even if they put you in a bunker you can still function just fine. The Lucy types were lost without direct contact with the farm. Eve not completely, but she couldn't function with any nuances, so she could be easily detected.

You, on the other hand, can manage just fine even when cutoff from the farm completely. You can improvise, they can as well, but to a much smaller degree. They have to take their hints from what's going on around them, but you can have original thoughts. You are the perfect undercover agent."

"Not to mention I'm the perfect suicide bomb if things get really nasty," I said.

"Who told you that?" he asked angrily.

"Sweetie, as you said I'm no idiot. If they take me prisoner and it looks as though there is no way out, you are going to do a Lucy to me. I can't fall into enemy hands for any serious investigations."

"Even if that were true, being taken isn't very likely, in your case. Unlike the Lucy or Eve types, you have a hell of a lot of field smarts. You can sense a trap, where they might walk into it."